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IDEFE3SrO E 



OF 



EDWIN M. STANTON, 



BY 



Pi O 3 ^^T E L L Iv^ ^ R, S M: 



Of Steubenville, Ohio. 



ftTEUBENVILLE, OHIO: 

N\'. R. Allisom's Printi>-g Establishment. 

1S73. 






V 



/ 

/ 



'^ 



y 



HDEFEISrOE 



OF 



EDWIN M. STANTON, 



BY 



R, O S ^W E Xj L 1v1^R.SH:, 



Of Steubenville, Ohio, 



IDEIPEISrCE! OF 

. EDVSTIN M. STANTON. 



The following was published in the Steubenville Herald in 
June, 1870, in answer to an attack on the memor}^ of the late 
Edwin M. Stanton : 

STANTON DEFENDED. 
Reply of Roswell Marsh to Judge Black. 



Mr. Editor : — A letter of Jeremiah S. Black to Henry Wilson, 
Senator from Massachusetts, has been published in the Gazette of the 3d 
inst., with the approval of the editor, which, if Edwin M. Stanton has 
one sincere friend left in the place of his birth, and where his early life 
was passed, demands and shall receive an answer. 

Judge Black claims to be anxious to rescue the memory of Mr. 
Stanton fi*om obloquy. Were Edwin M. Stanton now living, it would 
be, with all the energy of his nature, that he would exclaim : From 
such friends as Jeremiah S. Black, good Lord deliver me ! A brief 
reference to history will elucidate many things otherwise obscure, and 
in which Judge Black has erred in utter confusion in his own mind, 
or with more skill in sophistry than I had given him credit for, to be- 
wilder others. 

From an early period, the relative rank of the general Government and 
the States, had been a mooted question upon which young logicians tried 
their strength, and assuming as the basis of an argument that the States 
formed the Union, we were regularly confronted by the position that the 
thing created could not be greater than the creator, therefore : 

This conclusion was left practically suspended until 1832, when South 
Carolina, under the guidance of John C. Calhoun, making the tariff a 
ground of discontent, and asserting her supremacy as the means, organ- 
ized a military force, called a convention, and passed an ordinance of 
secession. Andrew Jackson was then President of the United States. 



The steru old soldier took a very different view of those proceedings 
and of his authority and duty from that taken by James Buchanan, 
and his Secretary of State, when the same course was renewed in 1860. 
He sent a military force to Charleston on his own responsibility and 
issued a proclamation of warning, drawn up in the nervous and majestic 
language of Daniel Webster, who was very appropriately called into 
council on that occasion. I recommend to Judge Black to' read that 
proclamation once more, and never again to invoke the name of Andrew 
Jackson or Edwin M. Stanton as a passport for that false Democracy 
of the Calhoun school, which had tainted Mr. Buchanan's whole cabi- 
net, except Holt and Stanton, and which Stanton denounced the 
moment the folly of a member of the cabinet disclosed to him, presuming 
upon his complicity, the fact that the cabinet was the centre of a con- 
spiracy almost ready to explode in treason and blood. The country has 
not yet forgotten the celerity with which Floyd, Cobb and Thompson, 
went out of the cabinet and hastened to their associates in treason, as 
Mr. Stanton entered it. What sent them off in such hot haste ? Judge 
Black does not believe any of them committed or planned treason while 
in office. Does he still hold that the authority of their States justified 
their action ? It looks like it. Mr. Stanton did not so believe. No 
wonder he was astonished at linding himself with such bed-fellows ; no 
wonder that his stern integrity expressed itself in coarse language — sar- 
senet words were not adapted to the occasion. No one here was surprised 
when they heard of the sudden revolution in the cabinet and of Stan- 
ton's agency in it. 

That treason had been in nursing for thirty years. If they thought to 
lure Stanton into it they mistook their man. He was not the stuff trait- 
ors are made of. On one other matter Judge Black is strangely igno- 
rant or purposely uncandid. That of the general sentiment in the free 
States respecting slavery. Judge Black writes as if he knew in the 
free States only abolitionists and the pro-slavery men. The first would 
assist a slave, in defiance of law, in escaping from his master. The other 
claimed for the slave holder the same authority to carry his slaves into 
Kansas or Nebraska, for example, that he had to carry his horses there. 
Judge Black would fain have it believed that Mr. Stanton, there being 
no middle ground, belonged to one or the other of these extremes. In 
fact both these extreme parties — both equally irrational and illegal-^did 
not compose five per cent, of the people of the free States. Wendell 
Phillips and John Brown were types of one ; Franklin Pierce, Jas. 
Buchanan and J, S. Black of the other. Edwin M. Stanton, and 
ninety-five per cent, of his countrymen in the free States, and many in 
the slave States, disapproving of slavery, acquiesced in the laws on the 
subject and obeyed them in good faith. 



5 

When the South and their allies conspired to dissolve the Union, to 
found ca State of which slavery should be the corner-stone, it required no 
change in Stanton, as to the purpose or the means, to take the side of 
his country ; it required none in Judge Black to take the opposite. 
One was of the school of Andrew Jackson, the other of that of John C. 
Calhoun. They naturally separated where their roads diverged. History 
will do them both justice. • 

ROSWELL MARSH. 



Judge Black, having in the Galaxy of February, 1871, 
made a more extended and artful attack on the memory of 
Mr. Stanton, an attack he would never have made in his life 
time, and the Galaxy, for reasons best known to the publish- 
ers, having refused to publish the following reply, by one who 
had known Mr. Stanton from his 3'outh, it is therefore laid 
before the public in this form. 

Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania, late Attorney General and 
Secretary of State of the United States, has again come before the public 
in au article of twenty pages iu the February number of the Galaxy, in 
the form of a letter to the Hon. Henry Wilson, on the subject of the 
agency of certain ofiicial cliaracters in the great national events of 
1860-G1-62. Of all these, Mr. Black is well entitled to say— 

Quae que ipse miserrima vidi et quorum pars magna, fai—Al\ which I saw 
and a large part of which I was. 

To enable the public to determine with accuracy what credit is to be 
given to the statement of a person so situated, it becomes necessary to 
enquire — 

1st. — How far his pei'sonal feelings were at the time enlisted m the 
matter in controversy. 

2d. — On what side in an excited controversy a writer's feelings were 
enlisted, in order to weigh the influence of his prejudice, or his partiality 
upon his views upon the subject. 

The soundness of tliis rule of weighing evidence will not, I think, ])e 
questioned. Taking these rules for our guide let us enquire — 

1st. — Were the feelings of J. S. Black enlisted in the controversy of 
1860-61 G3 ? 

It needs no proof that they were, still are, and deeply. 
2d. — On which side were they and arc they still enlisted? 
Here is no lack of evidence. Let us see. What were the facts. 



6 

JAMES Buchanan being Presideut of the United States and Jeremiah 
S. Black Attorney General ; the State of South Carolina having taken 
steps to sever her connections with the Union, the President, on the 17th 
of November, 1860, required the opinion of the Attorney General upon 
the questions then and there presented Mr. Black replied in a docu- 
ment now before me, bearing date November 20th, 1860, in which, after 
much other matter, he lays down the following expositions of^the Con- 
stitution, and which he now says were and are perfectly sound and 
correct : 

"Among the powers enumerated in Article 1, Section 8, is that "to de- 
clare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and to make rules con- 
cerning captures on land and water." This certainly means nothing 
more than the power to commence and carry on hostilities against the 
foreign enemies of the nation. Another clause in the same section gives 
Congress the power "to provide for calling forth the militia," and to use 
them within the limits of the State. But this power is so restricted by 
the words which immediately follow, that it can be exercised only for 
one of the following purposes : 

1st. To execute the laws of the Union ; that is, to aid the Federal 
officers in the performance of their regular duties. 

2d. To suppress insurrections againvSt the State; but this is confined 
by Article 4, Section 4, to cases in which the State herself shall apply 
for assistance against her own people. 

3d. To repel the invasion of a State by enemies who come from abroad 
to assail her in her own territory. All these provisions are made to pro- 
tect the States, not to authorize an attack by one part of the country 
upon another; to preserve their peace, and not to plunge them into civil 
war. Our forefathers do not seem to have thought that war was calcu- 
lated "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic 
tranquility, provide for the common defence, pi'omote the general welfare, 
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." There 
was undoubtedly a strong and universal conviction among the men who 
framed and ratified the Constitution, that military force would not only 
be useless, but pernicious, as a means of holding the States together. 

If it be true that war cannot he declared, nor a system of general hos- 
tilities carried on by the Central Government against a State, then it 
seems to follow that an attempt to do so would he ipso facto, an expul- 
sion of such State from the Union. Being treated as an alien and an 
enemy, she would be compelled to act accordingly. And if Congress 
shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and 
enmity and armed hostility between diflerent sections of the country, 
instead of the "domestic tranciuility" which the Constitution was meant 
to insure, will not all the States be absolved from their Federal obliga- 
tions ? Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or 
their blood to carry on a contest like that? 

'' The right of the General Government to preserve itself in its whole 
constitutional vigor, by repelling a direct and positive aggression upon 
its property or its officers, cannot be denied. But this is a totally differ- 
ent thing from an oflensive war to punish the people for the political 
misdeeds of their State Government, or to prevent a threatened violation 
of the Constitution, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Govern- 
ment of the United States is supreme. The States are colleagues of one 



another, and if some of them shall conquer the rest and hold them as 
subjugated provinces, it would totally destroy the whole theory upon 
which they are now connected. 

If this view of the subject be as correct as I think it is, then the 
Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall arm one 
part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely 
protecting the General Government in the exercise of its proper Consti- 
tutional functions." 

These ideas are echoed in the President's message a few days after 
with approbation. /True, they both talk loudly about further legislation, 
but remember, the limitations they have thus invoked, they have paraded 
as Constitutional limits, not defective statutes. If their doctrines were 
and are sound and correct, are not the Southern conclusions logical and 
incontrovertible ? 

Was the President's despondency unreasonable when in his message 
he said : "This cannot by possibility be performed in a State where no 
judicial authority exists to issue process and where there is no marshal 
to execute it, and where even if there were such an officer the entire pop- 
ulation would constitute one solid combination to resist him." Was not, 
on this hypothesis. Governor Maggofln, of Kentucky, entirely justifiable 
in issuing his proclamation of neutrality and warning both the contend- 
ing parties not to invade the sacred soil of the neutral and independent 
sovereignty of Kentucky ? 

'' But there is other and still stronger evidence of Mr. Black's personal 
partialities and prejudices on that subject. His article in the Galaxy is a 
studied panegyrize on the great leaders in the late treason, and sometimes 
open, sometimes covert, attack upon all who come in his way, who re- 
sisted their efforts to sustain what he, with a parental fondness, calls the 
"lost cause." In it he returns again to the attack on the memory of 
Edwin M. Stanton. His mode of attack is curious, and although art- 
ful, the artifice betrays itself and defeats its own purpose. His mode of 
attack is to make Stanton's political friends during the rebellion, convict 
him of many base crimes, whilst he undertakes to prove that Stanton 
approved of his construction of the Constitution at the time ; never 
changed his opinion ; that his labors in the War Department were one 
long course of hypocracy ; and all the while professing the warmest per- 
sonal friendship for Stanton, and an earnest desire to rescue his memory 
from the pollution his pretended friends had, in attempting to eulogize 
him, put upon it. 

Soon after Mr. Stanton went in the Cabinet as Attorney General, and 
when J. S. Black was Secretary of State, some members of the Cabinet 
left Washington very suddenly, and the country was excited by rumors, 
"as usual in such cases, varying in detail," about some unusual scene in 
a Cabinet council, in which Mr. Stanton bore a conspicuous part. All 



accounts agreed tliat Stanton used very strong denunciatory language, 
not entirely within tlie limits of diplomatic eti(iuette/ It was plain that 
a mistake had been made. Those who had placed Stanton there forgot 
tliat there were Jackson democrats who echoed his oaths that the Union 
should be preserved, and Calhoun democrats, whose leader Jackson 
regretted he had not hanged for treason. These last composed Mr. Bu- 
chanan's Cabinet in 1800, with two exceptions. There was clearly a 
mis-alliance. Some member or members of the Cabinet, supposing he 
had been sounded and was in sympathy with them, had perhaps in- 
cautiously disclosed to Stanton the Southern conspiracy and its concert 
in the Caljiuet, to which he listened iu astonishment, and having satisfied 
himself that he had not listened to fiction, hastened to appraise the 
President that he was surrounded and his steps and language watched 
by traitors. Yes, that was the word Mr. Stanton used in warning the 
President of the hidden volcano seething under his feet. The premature 
exposure was at the next Cabinet meeting, and the last some of them 
attended. There certainly was some potent cause for its sudden disrup- 
tion. Did that then come to the President's knowledge, for which Mr. 
Black says the President ordered John B. Floyd, then Secretary of War, 
to be indicted for malversation in oflTiceV He did not discover it before 
that, for Floyd was at that council, and was one who resigned and went 
South that or the next day. "Was Mr. Black at that council ? He was 
a member and might be there. He has not told and probably will not. 
He denies and ridicules the scene in llie Cabinet as a fiction. To his 
purpose it is indispensible to do so. With the facts standing on the 
record it would be impossible for Mr. Black to succeed in his design, 
which is, to show as far as he can, that Edwin M. Stanton, up to the 
time he went into tlie War Department, which was more than a year 
after the Cabinet affairs, from December 20, 18G0, to January 1'^, 18G2, 
was, in profession, in full accord and sympathy with him and other 
democrats of. the Calhoun school, and trusted and confided in by them 
whilst he treacherously, by whispers and stealth, if Wilson, Sumner and 
others tell the truth, l)etrayed their secrets to their enemies. Mr. Black's 
friends never disclosed to Edwin M. Stautoa any of their criminal secrets 
but once, and those he did not l)etray in a secret manner, but proclainietl 
their treachery to their country to their faces before the President in no 
honied accents. That the clue he had and his sagacity ena!:>led him to 
meet and baffle their treachery, and that he gave his country all his exer- 
tions admits of no doubt. 

They were often surprised to find their movements anticipated and 
counteracted, not because any one they trusted betrayed their confidence, 
but their movements betrayed themselves. The attempt to send the 
heavy Ordnance from Pittsburgh was an instance. So paljiable, under 
the circumstances, was the purpose, that William Wilkins and Charles 



iSlialer, of Pittsburgh, two of the oldest and most able democrats of 
Pennsylvania, like Stanton, of the Jackson school, prepared to prevent 
their removal by force. They applied to Stanton in the matter and the 
order was revoked. Yet Black vouches the honor and patriotism of 
Floyd and apolog-izes for his treason, secession I mean, as if loss of caste 
was an ample justirtcalion. He has vouched for the purity of J. S. Black, 
Floyd, Cobb, Toucey and Thompson, members of Mr. Buchauau's Cabi- 
net. Floyd is the only one who, he takes pains to say, was not a seces- 
sionist until oppression made him so. In their cases I shall not meddle. 
They have been Judged by a tribunal from wliicli there is no appeal. 
Mr. Black flatters himself that posterity will not t-ake much account of 
him. It is the best refuge of him and Ids compeers, l)iit let him not lay 
tlie tlaltering unction to his sou!. 

The man who iu November, ISOO, in the then cmKUtion of the public 
mind, falsely taught the restless slave interest that the framers of the 
Constituticm, \vliatc\er were Hair intentions, liad left ungarded an ave- 
nue by which liu'y might escape from a hated bond of union with a 
community diH'ering in some respects from them, and brought on a rebel- 
lion the greatest in extent ami atrocity since the fall of the angels, will 
not escape the vengeance of the future lustorian. 

Like the term Democrat, tiic term .\l)olitioni>t inis been much abused 
and made to cover wliat Ini'l no ;ilaee under it. Democrat being a popu- 
lar term, has lu'eii [Kr\'erleil nn;il many who lake shelter under it iiave 
as little affinity with its original iirinciples as those who alfected rever- 
ence for the heirloom of au aucesler l)y worshiping the bung-hole of a 
perished l)arrel. Abolitionist on the oilier liand being, and deservedly, 
an unpopular one; wiioevcr in ISOO would make a man odious in the 
South, did it most etVectually by calling him an Al)oliti«»nist. The 
cliarge once made, like tlie shirt of Nessus, it rouM never be removed. 
The Abolitionists were very lew, an 1 were in the free States despised. 
The iilea of Stanton or any man ri-jiecting himself, thinking of answer- 
ing oin; here is simply absurd. Suuiebody lias soio Mr. Black badly in 
th;lt Stni'y. 

When it became desirable with certain men to lii\' the Southern heart, 
and hasten on the secession, the policy was adopted of classing Republi- 
can and .Vljolitionist as efjuivalcnt terms, and in process of time it came 
to be applied to ail who opposed the attempt to ibrci- slavery into Kan- 
sas or dissented IV(jm the I~)red >c..tl. decision. Thus expanded in its 
application, the term has 'now lost all its ort'ensive meaning, and embraces 
all except those who participated in or syinptithised with the rebellion. 
Wlien, therefore. .Mr. Black calls Stanton an Abolitionist merely, in 18(iO, 
1801 or 18i)'2, the (.diarge, whatevei the motive, was harmless. More 
than two-iliird^' oi' the pn'ople were .Vbolitionists iu that sense. 



10 

111 the .sense in wliidi ;i!)olilioiiisiii sought to iuvaclc the rights of tlie 
slavehohlers in tlie slave States, neither Stanton nor 1 ever were abo- 
litionists. Had we ))een aslcecl to sanction the iloetrine that by tlie 
Constitution slavery Avas the normal condition, tlie common law of tlie 
earth, therefore of the Territories, that the ordinance of 1787 being re- 
pugnant to that law was void ; aU of which was taught in the long 
sophistical ibiter dicta in the Dreil Scott case after the Court had disrais.sed 
the case for want of jurisdiction, as what they Avouldhave decided if the 
points had been before them for judgment. Stanton and i many times 
denied that such d.cisiou would have been law. If that made him and 
me abolitionists so be it. The case has no merit any sound constitutional 
lawyer could respect, and the Judges who wrote those sycophcUitic 
opinions, for what they flattered themselves was a rising power, very 
little. They have now all gone to the contempt of mankind together. 

Mr. Black is very vngue as to dates, but I ])eneve all the events in 
which he charges Stanton with duplicity ocenred between the times 
when he became Attorney General antl his appointment as Secretary of 
War. This was more than a year. When did tlie explosion in the Cab- 
inet take place as reported ? Can Mr. Black show that after that date 
he or Floyd, or Cobb, or Toucey, or Thompson, ever confided to Stanton 
any of their party, secession, criminal secrets, in confidence, that he 
would conceal them as suchV 

I will say here that anything derogatory to the chaiacter of Mr. Stan- 
ton, depending upon the assertion of J. S. Black, alone, will not be 
credited a moment. Nor is his certificate to his good cliaracter valued 
any higher. It is not askecl for, is wholly gratuitous, and besides, asso- 
ciates itself with his certificates for Floyd, Cobb, Young and Thompson. 
The association may not advance. Does he mean to certify that Stanton 
was altogether such an one as they until he became corrupted V 

But there is another view of this matter I wish to present to the coun- 
try. Mr. Stanton believed Mr. Buchanan sincere and patriotic. He went 
into his Cabinet in good laith to help him sustain the Union. Did not 
the other membersnjf the Cabinet profess the same thing? Did Stanton 
desert the flag of his country ? When the crisis came where were the 
others found V Where are the survivers found now? 

General Cass left the otlice of Secretary of State December 20t]i, 1800, 
protesting against the President's message. ]\Ir. Black was his successor 
and Stanton v.'as appointed Attorney General. Floyd's order to send the 
ordnance from Pittsburgh South was issued the same dav. When did 
the explosion in the Cabinet take place V What was it about:-' It was 
between December 20th 1860 and January 1st 1801. Was it when Stan- 
ton applied iu Cabinet to have th.'it order revoked? Had Fiovd inno- 



11 

cently told Stanton his motive for the onler ? Had the President known 
of the order? Floyd and Cobb resigned, left, Floyd went into the Con- 
federate army, Cobb i^ablishcd a violent abuse of the President, the oth- 
ers remained until March, and Elack says i^tanloii Ijetrayed their secrets. 
Not unless after what had passed they trijst'.d their designs to him in 
confidence. 
/ 
That there was duplicity, two-facedness, hypocrisy in abundance in 

November and Deceml)er 1860, and in 1861, there is no room for doubt. 
The actors at the time obscured matters,- but like the natural laws, the 
storm which followed soon cleared the political atmosphere and each in- 
dividual stood out in his proper character; Jackson Democrats, Thomas 
H.Benton, Lewis Cass, Stephen A. Douglas, John Brougli, David Todd, 
and thousands upon thousands of others came spieading on the breese, 
the glorious star-spangled banner and saying to republicans here we meet, 
on a common platform. There is no party issue here. Let all swear on 
the altar of our common country. Was anybody surprised that amongst 
the foremost in that gallant phalanx appeared Edwin M. Stanton? 

If ;\Tr. Black and his compeers had for a moment trusted that they had 
entangled him in the spiders web of treachery, the celerity with which he 
burst it soon undeceived them. His was not the material out of which 
traitors are made. 



/ 



What was the state of facts on the 20th of December 18G0, Congiess 
was \n session. Every State except South Carolina was represented. In 
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Conven- 
tions were assembling whose actions were a foregone conclusion. Mem- 
bers of Congress from those States had sat in their seats and refused to 
vote saying their States had no interest in what was done there, that the 
time for compromise was past. Did it require an avowal to prove that 
that ordnance was being scut to a hostile camp, or the subsequent events 
to prove that the author was then preparing to follow it ? It is all plain 
now. That Stanton's denunciation precipitated his flight is no doubt true. 
It would seem from Black's statement that Floyd's order was not in wri- 
ting. Black then knew all about it. Was it military then to send an im- 
portant military order hundreds of miles verbally-*' Had that ordnance 
been sent and been taken by the South and the order denied how would 
the commandant at Pittsburgh have stood ? Black's certilicate will hardly 
convince me that he, if he was sharp, was honest. ' 

There are some amusing things in Black's article in which he draws 
largely, the time considered, on the gullibility of his readers. For exam - 
])]e. In 1859, before any war was apprehended, as Black says, Floyd sent 
115,000 stand of w6rthless and unservicable muskets from a Northern to 
a Southern arsenal. Had Floyd no way to spend the public money, but 
by transporting many tons of worthless iron and wood over the Country V 



12 

Wlitii tlie war l)i\)ke out, it was foiiiid lluil the Soiiili liad a lari;v army 
org-anizc'd ready lor the Ik-Id ami anii-< i)\' all kinds and amuuinitioii in 
abundaiice, all whicli had been seized in Uiiiled SlaUs arsenals. The 
Northern arsenals contained many worthless arms, we heard of none in 
the Sonth. In I'aet the Soutliern leaders had conteniplaietl secession ever 
since 18:io. They waited, not for t'ne wish, hut tlie pretext. In lH'6o. the 
line was drawn between Jackson or Union and Callioiin or Secession dem- 
ocrats. The election of Lincoln in 18(50, caused by the purposed separa- 
tion of tiiose two winus, oU'ered thr pretext. Aj,^ain, I'orsoot-li, the democ- 
racy were sound on the Kansas (juestion, so says Jerry Black, and but 
for the knavish tri(d< of ihe abolitionists in jirevenlinn a vote on slavery 
it would have iieen expelleil from Ivausas and the \vliole ti'oid)le settled 
in the way they pretended to wish, J)id Black believe lie could, without 
the danger of authentic refutation, indulge his imagination as freely as 
Milton could up<jn the fall of the angels? Need I cite Franklin Pierce, 
James Buchanan, U. Ji. Taney and J. S. Black against him V The events 
are within the memory of millions still living and are as familiar as house- 
hold words. 

Again, a remaik of Stanton in (-(jnunon familiar conversation nearly 
thirty years ago, depending upon the memory of the hearer, from which 
Avithout giving us the language, wliich would probably have spoiled the 
story, Mr. Black infers that his friend btanton -when a boy avowed a 
deliberate .settled purpose to betray the Constitution and its friends into 
the cruel clutches of their enemies whenever he could And an opportu- 
nity. Why did he not put the story sixty years ago? It would have 
been more venerable and at least as probable. A line of explanation 
which I will give soon will spoil it by proving Black and Stanton con- 
sistent throughout. 

In 1860 and ISOl, Washington City swarmed with spies of both sexes. 
Any movements for the country were known at the South with almost as 
much celerity as Ahab learned what passed in Benhadad's Cabinet. I do 
not tind that Mr. Black ever complained or thought strange of that. 
Stanton's energy and sagacity enabled him, no doubt by similar means to 
detect many of the schemes of the traitors, which, as was his duty, he 
communicated to trustwortiiy men. It is singular that Mr. Black should 
charge that Stanton was treacherous in that all the secrets of treason he 
disclosed to Wilson, Sumner, Dawes and others, were entrustecl to him 
by his colleagues in the (Cabinet in strict confidence. 

^ The Calhoun and Jackson wings of the Democracy were fully formed 
before 1840 and the intention to secede had been ofteu avowed. Stanton, 
then an ardent young man of twenty-live, I have no doubt often de- 
nonuced the Calhoun doctrine and avowed his determination to resist it 
should it ever attempt secession. Firmly and with wonderful ability 



IS 

has lie redi'eiiicd liis iiU'dnc witli his lil'c. Tlial. sccL'Shum iMJiislil iiiion 
wJiicli 8tanU)u deiKJinici'd in liis youtii and which iu his mature life lie 
cruslied with the sti'eiiyih of a Hercules wliilst sustaining anil vindica- 
ting the Constitution our Fatliers made, is tlie object of Mr. Black's pro- 
found veneration and Stanton's words and acts in hostility to it and its 
friends are the very things which Mr. Black sets down against hhii as 
crimes of the lowost and most degrading character. AH Mr. Black's pro- 
fessed desire to defend Stanton vanishes and his real feelings and charac- 
ter stand out on the canvas when he comes to the loth of January, 1873, 
and Stanton's appointment to the responsible position af Secretai-y of 
War. When he was nominated Mr. Sumner at once, Black says, vouched 
for him, in Mr. Black's eyes a most suspicions circumstance. I now 
quote Mr. Black : 

"When Mr. Stantoii went into the War I)ei)artment, he immediately 
began to act with reckless disregard of his sworn duty. He surrendered 
himself with the most loathsome miscreants and used them for the foul- 
est purposes. Law, justice, and humanitj' were utterly outraged. Tliose 
who knew him as I did and heard him curse the perpetrators of such 
crimes only a month or two before, exercised the charity which believeth 
all things, and concluded that he was moved by some headlong impulse 
which liad suddenly revolutionized all his thoughts, feelings, and princi- 
ples, of action. But your proofs show that in the kindness of our Con- 
stitution we did not give heed enough to the maxim. Nemo npenlefidt tur- 
pissimus. Such a depth could not be reached by a single plunge. The 
integrity of his moral nature must have previously undergone that grad- 
ual process of decomposition Avhich could result only from long and sym- 
pathetic association with the enemies of the Constitution." 

Do not, gentle reader, be alarmed Tliose teri-iblc acts of tyranny Mr. 
Black denounces in terms almost as violent as those in which Stanton 
was reported to have assailed Floyd and Cobb in the Cabinet, are the 
same acts by which Stanton cleared the departments at Washington City 
of spies and traitors ; locked many such up in prison; in imitation of 
Washington in the whiskey insurrection and Jackson at New Orleans, 
refused to produce them at the demand of Roger B. Taney, liiniseif a se- 
cessionist, organized and equipped armies as few men ever did liefore, and 
crushed out that Constitution Black so much admires. 

Truly the standpoint from winch a man looks ;it a tiling has much to 
do with its appearance. Will history doubt as to Black's position ? 
True he and his colleagues made loud professions of loj-alty, and true it 
was. Congress refu.sed, convinced of their duplicity and treachery, to vrust 
him. Stanton lield Mr. Buchanan I'onest, but weak and controlkid by 



l4 

Black. His message left no doubt of that. Black's claim that he patron- 
ized Stanton, gave him business, gave him office, and hence deduces in- 
gratitude is too rich. In some reading, I have found no instance of van- 
ity on a par with it. 

But enough, I might expose much more of Black's sophistry but will 
not anticipate the duties of the future historian. Tli^e materials are all 
in imperishable forms, and when, in future times the name of Edwin M. 
Stanton shall stand out as representing one of the mighty minds provi- 
dence raises up at long intervals to show to mankind that the men who 
rescue a great nation from destruction are entitled to reverence as well 
as those who watch over its infant growth, the name of Jeremiah S. Black 
with his share in the great drama, will not be permitted to perish. 

ROSV/ELL MARSH. 



, ,«oaRY OF CONGRESS 

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013 708 ooS J* 



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